commentary - PRCog's Gear Grindings

How Twitter will die…

(Thank goodness I don’t need subheads – not sure I can be that optimistic twice in a row…. 😉 )

No, I don’t mean the company, I mean how it will die for each of us individually.

As a number of you know I’m an old-school hacker (in this sense). Everything from spending hours tinkering with the order of loading up TSRs in my autoexec.bat and config.sys files to get the most from my 2MB of RAM to coding HTML in DOS ‘Edit‘ before there were any worthwhile HTML editor applications. Back in the day this kind of thing went hand-in-hand with message and file boards to trade secrets, tricks and hacks.

And so, for many of us it all really begins with the BBS. Like so many to-be hackers of the time I was hooked from that first time I heard my 2400 bps modem connect to a BBS (a WWIV system I’ll note). It only took days until I began saving up for a 14.4k bps ….

This was still back in those precious days when BBSes, Rock music and staring at a computer screen were all the cause of angsty and withdrawn teenagers in the mass media. Anyone who participated back then surely recalls their parents asking

“What do you talk to ‘those people‘ about?”
“Why would you send messages to someone you don’t know?”
“It must only be perverts and criminals – you will stop now or [Insert threat].”

Yes, it’s the same questions we get now from the luddites – why would someone I don’t know care about what I’m doing or what I thought of a particular movie?

And it’s the same reason – we’re social creatures and for some of us this is a preferred way to connect, for better or worse … but that’s a post for a different day.

Since then, so for nearly 20 years, I’ve pretty much done it all:

ran (or as they would’ve called it then – SysOp-ed) my own BBSes, Co-SysOped others; even posting against myself to build interest in the system (Hmmm, maybe I should talk to someone about this MPD 😉 )
played in aol chat rooms
admined IRC and other live (actual live – no APIs and no fail whales) chat systems
organized and promoted listservs/mailing-lists
and the list goes on….

I’ve avoided playing with online communities (or as we’re now calling them – social networks) for the last few years since I’ve seen how it works and with the assistance of my crystal ball know how it’ll end and had little reason to rejoin the fun…

(Disclaimer – this applies to the ‘everyday’ users, not writers/journalists/bloggers or Sm. Businesses who use the service to ply their wares. It’s for those of us who discuss booze, dinner plans, work, yoga classes, what our kids are up to, etc. The “real conversations” on the service – where you can figure out a user’s top “friends,” recommendations, potential FollowFridays simply by looking at their last 40 tweets or their stats. Take a look at my most frequent @’s – I couldn’t even begin to dispute the conclusions that can be drawn from it in terms of who I speak to, or have spoken to, on a regular basis historically).

And so, one day, it’ll happen a few years down the line – you’ll come back from a business trip, long vacation, or sick leave and simply not have the time or energy to login to twitter and your life will continue with no (or minimal) negative effect.

Out of a distorted sense of obligation you’ll eventually login, but won’t participate like you did before – conversation threads will be lost, the tweeple you only chatted with occasionally will be lost in the static, and your ‘regulars’ will even be logging in less or their conversations will become diluted as more people join. Then you’ll go for weeks without logging in….

Notices of DMs will skim by in your email (assuming you’re even signed up for the notices) unless it’s from someone you’ve taken the care to trade actual emails with and even then you’ll find yourself replying to them in email. A relationship growth to be sure, but not twitter based which is the topic of this post. Eventually you’ll simply not bother to login except when bored on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon with a good drink to see what’s going on and even that will stop at some point…

Fast-forward a bit more and…

One day, 5-10 years in the future. Any loosely knit circles of friends you’ve developed have spread to the four winds and something will spark a memory – A new coworker with a less common spelling of Erik/Arik, mention of a Cog being broken on a gear or someone using the word twitter to actually refer to what birds do and you’ll recall a tweet, incident (perhaps a public tweet meant to be a Direct), or maybe even this paragraph.

A smile will pass over your face and for a moment you’ll pause. You’ll wonder what happened to all those people you ‘knew’ and spent hours, days even, talking to…and the-then real life will catch up and time will move forward once more.

You’ll make vain attempts to reach out to a few of them, but alas cell phone numbers and email addresses change, people become impossible to find, and even if you do find them after half a decade what do you have to chit-chat about that was so special back then in ’09? The feeling won’t be anything easy to express – just a feeling of a deep (now hollow) friendship, memories of fun, and a sense of loss.

For anyone who was using technology to connect 5-10 years ago – AOL chat rooms, message boards, forums, etc. – Do you still go to the same haunts? Do you have any connections from those prior platforms that moved on with you to twitter and facebook (excluding maybe pre-existing real life connections)?

If yes, then you’re certainly a better man than me.

Conclusion – I don’t have a real one….

It’s up to each of us to make of this what we want. If it’s deep relationships, continuing friendships, lasting connections – then make it real. Meet your people, email with them, let them in and buck this trend. If this is just a game, a time-killer, or something to do during calls – then continue on, but one day you will know you’ve lost something.

(And yes, before the comments begin I do see the irony in this coming from me — the one who doesn’t even post his real name).

Dear Twitter….your new @ settings suck

Ok, I don’t usually post this quickly on anything but this one sucks particularly badly.

No, I didn’t find this out on my own. I first saw it on @whitneyhess‘s blog.

So here’s the beef – there’s been a change to what shows up in your timeline – long story short (if I’m reading this right) – when someone you follow replies to someone you don’t follow you won’t see the update of the person you do follow.

Oddly enough I was working on a blog post on the train this evening reflecting that I get and find more good twitter people NOT through #followfriday but just by seeing who else my people are talking to and what they’re talking about. Side note – the iphone/itouch keyboard is really quite wretched on a bouncy train.

Well this change basically takes twitter from a great cocktail party (my favorite analogy) where you can easily join any conversation and make new friends to a cliquey high school cafeteria where if you don’t know the right people (or combination of people) you simply won’t find a place to sit and wonder wtf you’re doing there.

There’s simply so many ways this sucks that it’s difficult to even list them all. Here’s to hoping this changes before I wake up tomorrow morning.

Dear Client … Write for the right reasons

Here’s to hoping I’m the only one this happens to and that it’s a wasted read for the rest of you, I doubt it tho.

–PC (PR Cog)

Dear Client –

Write for the Right Reasons.

When you send me an article for placement (that is, a ‘byline’), after reading it and fixing some of your wretched speeling and grammer (ha!), I try to figure out what the best target publication would be for your piece. Among the items I consider –

who can make sense of this article (is it too technical for a general purpose publication),
who would be most interested in the article (if it’s stale it does little good to anyone) and
are there any other factors limiting its usability (a 12K word commentary is probably NOT going to find a home in a newsweekly).

Once I think I’ve found an appropriate set of targets I’ll likely run that list by you, and anyone else in your PR, marketing, business development department that needs to see it. Then the inevitable will happen. I (and you might be CC’d on it) will get an email, that in some way or another can be distilled to one of the following:

How will placement there help us get new customers/business/clients
No one in the industry we know will see it when it runs in X
It’ll be meaningless and/or a waste of time if it runs in Y because we’ll have to cut it down to size.

There are three main (non-academic) reasons to put pen to paper and author an article you want to see placed:

To bring in new business
To strut for your industry (can overlap with #1 if referrals are a big part of your business)
To reinforce your reputation with old business

These are all perfectly valid reasons to write, but for each purpose there are considerations to well…consider (I only take out the thesaurus for paying clients, you readers will just have to cope).

If you want to develop new clients/business you have to write at a level your client will understand. If you work with widgets, don’t get into statistical analysis of widget use over time – it’s boring and no one will want to read it except subscribers to “Widget Analysis Weekly.” Write instead, on what people/businesses can get from statistical analysis of their widgets – use plain English and real life examples:

When XYZ Corp analyzed their widget use they discovered none of their clients actually LIKED the yellow widgets but they ordered it because they wanted the complete set. They discontinued yellow, introduced canary, which customers loved, and began ordering individually.

No mention of how the survey was done or other minutiae that potential clients don’t want. Give them the what and the why – not the How. These type of articles CAN go in general purpose business/entrepreneurial publications. Potential big circulation, but the trade-offs will be 1) No one from your industry will see it and 2) a pretty small percent of the readers will actually be interested in it so that circulation number can be deceiving. That being said – the ones who are interested, can become clients.

If you’re trying to strut for your industry peers, which is not at all inappropriate if a significant part of your business comes from referrals or you get a decent amount of B2B work, go as high end as you’d like.

Make it excruciatingly detailed on the how – they’re the ones that will be able to call your bluff if you gloss over something – let it be known far and wide that you are the man (woman) when it comes to this field and if they want the best they need to call you.

The trade-off – No WAY does it make it into a magazine you can find at the airport and your friends and family will have never heard of it (with certain exceptions – JAMA, etc.). What I’m saying is that it WILL end up in a trade. Circulation will be low, but of those subscribers, a well developed concept will be important to most of them and will get readers. These also frequently take the form of newsletters with high annual subscription costs (they’ll have a big pass-along rate where a large office only has 1 subscript.) and no advertising since the circ. numbers are low. The readers are looking for deep content, not something to read while waiting for the dentist.

Both of these types of articles can help with #3 – building up your rep with existing clients.

A stat I’ve heard tossed about indicates it costs around 1/10 the cost to keep a client than it does to get a new client. Remind your clients of why they hired you – if you send them a newsletter with your ‘published articles’ and it’s recognizable business magazines or respected trades they’ll know you’re staying sharp and current on the industry.

Don’t wait for an RFP where you’re begging for your lunch to make the client feel good about the choice of hiring you (or buying your product) – do it continually, like bringing your spouse flowers for no external reason, or doing the dishes/dinner/other chore without being asked (or asking if you should).

And so the moral of my story — write for the right reasons:

If you’re looking for new clients, figure out where they read and write to their level – tell them something they don’t know but should.
If you’re looking to impress – do it, but realize who’s going to be most interested.

One one more thing – if you’re doing this do it when it’s most helpful. If you’re writing an overview of a new law or regulation in your business do it when it’s new – not 6 months later. If you write an ‘overview’ article 6 months later write it ‘down’ to a general reader because everyone IN your business already knows what you’ve managed to regurgitate onto the page and needs analysis or real deep thought – not just summaries.

Sincerely,
Your PR Cog.